Dorothea Röschmann – Mozart Arias (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 56:40 minutes | 955 MB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical
German soprano Dorothea Röschmann has been a staple of Mozart performances in Germany and Austria. When you first hear her voice in one of the Mozart standards — sample “Porgi, amor, qualche ristoro” from The Marriage of Figaro (track 3) — it sounds like something has misfired, and that you’d rather hear the singer in the likes of Mahler (whom she has also sung a good deal). If you are looking for creamy Mozart singing, look elsewhere; Röschmann has a dark sound, with a bit of mud to it. But put the aria in context, as you would when hearing an entire opera, and Röschmann begins to make a great deal more sense: dramatic sense. She falls toward the actress end of the singer-actress spectrum, certainly, but she’s capable of quiet high notes that will give you a chill because they express the nature of the character involved, tragic or comic. Röschmann offers a short program with a pair of arias from Idomeneo, K. 366, and a pair from La Clemenza di Tito, K. 621, plus the scene Bella mia fiamma, addio!, K. 528. None of these is an orthodox choice, and all fit her powerful voice. The Swedish Radio Symphony under Daniel Harding provides sensitive support, and it’s also significant that the graphics really invite you in to find out what is going on here. This is fresh Mozart indeed, from a singer emerging as an international star.
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Dorothea Herbert & Peter Nilsson – Die stille Stadt (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:09:08 minutes | 1,96 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © 7 Mountain Records
German soprano Dorothea Herbert submerged herself into the quietness we’ve all encountered during the COVID lockdowns. Society became to a full stop, an of course tragic time but also one that offered introspection. “Die stille Stadt” gives musical expression to that and became an album with a radiating program consisting of music by the unfortunately still underrated Alma Mahler, two breathtaking song cycles by Erich Wolfgang Korngold (including the famous aria Gl”uck, das mir verblieb from Die tote Stadt), completed by a selection of very powerful and illustrative songs by Franz Schreker. The piano part is taken care of by the legendary Peter Nilsson. “Die stille Stadt” is an album that will move many lovers of vocal recitals, due to it’s resonant and exclusive musical character with not too often heard repertoire.
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Dorival Caymmi – Canto de Amor a Bahia e Quatro Acalantos (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 28:12 minutes | 237 MB | Genre: Bossa Nova
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla
Dorival Caymmi (Brazilian Portuguese: [doriˈvaw kaˈĩmi]; April 30, 1914 – August 16, 2008) was a Brazilian singer, songwriter, actor, and painter active for more than 70 years beginning in 1933. He contributed to the birth of Brazil’s bossa nova movement, and several of his samba pieces, such as “Samba da Minha Terra”, “Doralice” and “Saudade da Bahia”, have become staples of música popular brasileira. Equally notable are his ballads celebrating the fishermen and women of Bahia, including “Promessa de Pescador”, “O Que É Que a Baiana Tem?”, and “Milagre”. Caymmi composed about 100 songs in his lifetime, and many of his works are now considered to be Brazilian classics. Both Brazilian and non-Brazilian musicians have covered his songs.
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Doris Troy – Sings Just One Look And Other Memorable Selections (1963/2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 30:24 minutes | 665 MB | Genre: R&B
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Rhino Atlantic
Sings Just One Look And Other Memorable Selections is Doris Troy’s magnificent debut album. It includes her massive hit single “Just One Look.” “Just One Look” charted at #3 on Billboard’s Top R&B Singles and #10 on the Billboard Hot 100. Troy displays her masterful songwriting abilities and ravishing interpretive skills. The album also includes a breathtaking rendition of “Stormy Weather.”
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Doris Day & Frank Sinatra – Young At Heart (1954/2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 33:49 minutes | 334 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla
1954, first album of that year,. IIGMHTY recorded July. Pop hit. 24 Sept & 8 Oct 1954 recorded. In 1954 Doris and Frank Sinatra, two of Hollywood’s biggest recording and screen stars, joined forces for Young At Heart. This movie was a remake by Warner Bros. of their acclaimed 1938 picture Four Daughters. Appropriately, Columbia Records released a 10” album (CL 6339) of songs from the movie on 1 November 1954. However, because of Sinatra’s exclusive contract with rival label Capitol, only Doris could cut new studio recordings for this release. She therefore reprised five beauties from the movie’s soundtrack, which included her solo version of “You My Love”, a song she had originally sung with Frank in the film’s memorable finale scene.
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Doris Day – This is Doris Day! (Remastered) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:05:20 minutes | 323 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla
Doris Day (born Doris Mary Kappelhoff; April 3, 1922 – May 13, 2019) was an American actress, singer, and animal welfare activist. She began her career as a big band singer in 1939, achieving commercial success in 1945 with two No. 1 recordings, “Sentimental Journey” and “My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time” with Les Brown & His Band of Renown. She left Brown to embark on a solo career and recorded more than 650 songs from 1947 to 1967.
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Sam Coslow – Simply … “Day” Dreams! (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:39:25 minutes | 1,67 GB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Jube Legends
Doris Day (born Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff; April 3, 1922 – May 13, 2019) was an American actress, singer, and animal welfare activist. She began her career as a big band singer in 1939, achieving commercial success in 1945 with two No. 1 recordings, “Sentimental Journey” and “My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time” with Les Brown & His Band of Renown. She left Brown to embark on a solo career and recorded more than 650 songs from 1947 to 1967.
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Doris Day – Cuttin’ Capers • Bright And Shiny (1959/2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:03:54 minutes | 675 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RevOla
This discount-priced two-fer combines two up-tempo Doris Day albums from the late ’50s and early ’60s. The discs were not released sequentially; 1959’s Cuttin’ Capers was followed by two 1960 releases, What Every Girl Should Know and Show Time, before Bright and Shiny appeared in 1961. But the two albums share a sprightly tone. The theme of Bright and Shiny is happy songs – “I Want to Be Happy,” “Happy Talk” – while Cuttin’ Capers is even more frolicsome. There are songs that were newly written at the time, such as the scene-setting “Cuttin’ Capers,” which leads things off, and “Twinkle and Shine,” the title song from Day’s reissued 1961 film (the first time around in 1959 it had been called It Happened to Jane), which closed the disc, but for the most part the songs are drawn from the Great American Songbook, dating back to the mid-’20s for tunes like “I’m Sitting on Top of the World” and “I Want to Be Happy” (both songs Day had sung in films in the ’50s) and as recent as the late ’40s for “Steppin’ out With My Baby” from the 1948 film Easter Parade and “Happy Talk” from the 1949 musical South Pacific. The material and the arrangements are well chosen for a singer who was better at conveying contentment than turmoil. Of course, Day was always on an even keel, and though she gamely joins in on the celebration like the professional she is, she never gets deliriously happy. Like the screen persona she was developing at the same time in her comedies with Rock Hudson, she is friendly and even sexy, but wholesome and down to earth. These albums were not big sellers in their initial releases, but they hold up well 40-plus years later.
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Doris Akers – Highway To Heaven (1965/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 29:55 minutes | 654 MB | Genre: Pop, Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © RCA – Legacy
Doris Mae Akers was an American Gospel music composer, arranger and singer. As the founder and leader of the Sky Pilot Choir, she was the pioneer of what became known as the Doris Akers/Sky Pilot Sound, referring to her distinctive style of directing and arrangement that was subsequently much imitated. She was also a recording artist and songwriter in her own right.
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Doric String Quartet – String Quartets Nos. 12 & 15 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:45 minutes | 1,03 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Alongside its highly praised Haydn series, the Doric String Quartet continues its Schubert journey with this second volume of quartets, which precipitates us into the fraught world of late Schubert. Both composers will be central in the Quartet’s recitals next year, to take place in the highest-profile international venues, from New York’s Carnegie Hall to Berlin’s Konzerthaus, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and London’s Wigmore Hall.
Franz Schubert returned to composing string quartets in the 1820s, after four years of focusing on songs which were beginning to gain him wider recognition.
His late chamber compositions reveal probably his most characteristic music, full of deep intimacy and profound ambivalence. The ‘Quartettsatz’ (Quartet Movement) presents a turbulent, norm-breaking first movement. Only a fragment survives of a serene Andante in A flat, and nothing for any scherzo or finale. If the ‘Rosamunde’ and ‘Death and the Maiden’ (CHAN10737) are the most frequently heard of the quartets of Schubert, his last completed one – in G major – certainly remains his most uncompromising in its vastness, and perhaps his most prophetic of the musical future.
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Doric String Quartet – Mozart: String Quartets, Vol. 1 – The Prussian Quartets (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:30:00 minutes | 1,56 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Towards the end of his life, short of money and heavily in debt, Mozart had the opportunity to visit King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia – a famous patron of the arts and a keen and above-average musician. Mozart performed for the King and left with some cash and a commission for a set of six string quartets, of which these are the only three he completed. They are ground-breaking in the way in which Mozart utilised the voicing of the instruments. King Friedrich was a viola da gamba player turned cellist, and these works feature extensive melodies for the cello, usually in a high register, thus emancipating the cello from the bass line and introducing a more evenly blended texture.
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Doric String Quartet – Mendelssohn: String Quartets, Vol. 2 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:29:15 minutes | 1,53 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Following an exceptional critical reception of their first volume of Mendelssohn’s Quartets, the Doric String Quartet now completes the project. As in the case of the previous volume, the players juxtapose one of the early quartets (No. 2) with two of the later compositions (No. 3 and No. 4), composed a decade or so later.
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Doric String Quartet – Mendelssohn – String Quartets Volume 1 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:26:27 minutes | 1,54 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Alongside its ongoing and much lauded Haydn and Schubert series, both on-stage and on-record, the Doric String Quartet with this Mendelssohn album is adding a new milestone in its repertoire.
Mendelssohn wrote and published these three quartets at very different stages in his life and they therefore outline the complete trajectory of his creative output.
The early Op. 12, also called No. 1, was composed in London and includes many musical allusions to Beethoven, dead only a few years before its composition. These subtly contrast with Mendelssohn’s genially flowing energy.
While Op. 44 No. 3, which incorporates many deft variations, developments, and combinations, follows an extended honeymoon tour and Mendelssohn’s twenty-ninth birthday, Op. 80 emerged from a bout of helpless depression after the sudden death of Mendelssohn’s older sister and confidante, Fanny. Mendelssohn described this quartet as a Requiem, and the nervous agitation often found in his music here bursts forth with full force. Resignation, agitation, and nostalgia shape the work, the almost shocking finality of which may be said to prefigure Mendelssohn’s own death only six months later.
Read moreDoric String Quartet – Haydn: String Quartets, Op. 33 (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]
Doric String Quartet – Haydn: String Quartets, Op. 33 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:08:07 minutes | 2,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Composed in the summer and autumn of 1781, Haydn’s Op. 33 Quartets were dedicated to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia and premiered on Christmas Day that year in the apartment of the Duke’s wife, the Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna. Nicknamed ‘the Russian quartets’, Op. 33 were some of Mozart’s favourites among Haydn’s works, and inspired Mozart to write his own set of six quartets, of 1785, dedicated to Haydn. Generally light in nature, the Op. 33 are extremely tuneful works, all set in major keys (apart from No. 1, in B minor), and all written in four movements.
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Doric String Quartet – Erich Wolfgang Korngold: The String Quartets (2010)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:56 minutes | 1,34 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
Described by the magazine Gramophone as ‘one of the finest young string quartets’, whose members are ‘musicians with fascinating things to say’, the Doric String Quartet has received rave responses from audiences and critics across the globe. The Quartet’s recent recording of Korngold’s string quartets was a 2010 Critics’ Choice in Gramophone.
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